cal pursuits, but on this occasion my
curiosity overpowered all other feelings, and I spent two or three
hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinary
symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow,
and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a last
chance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, friends of
my father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire.
I remember staggering from my bed to the window on the bright spring
morning after my arrival, and throwing open the casement. Life seemed to
come back on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the faint odor of
wood-smoke, like that which floated across the farm-yard in the early
morning, is as good to me as the "sweet south upon a bed of violets."[7]
I soon recovered, but for years I suffered from occasional paroxysms of
internal pain, and from that time my constant friend, hypochondriacal
dyspepsia, commenced his half century of co-tenancy of my fleshly
tabernacle.

Looking back on my "Lehrjahre,"[8] I am sorry to say that I do not think
that any account of my doings as a student would tend to edification.
In fact, I should distinctly warn ingenuous youth to avoid imitating
my example. I worked extremely hard when it pleased me, and when it did
not--which was a very frequent case--I was extremely idle (unless making
caricatures of one's pastors and masters is to be called a branch
of industry), or else wasted my energies in wrong directions. I read
everything I could lay hands upon, including novels, and took up all
sorts of pursuits to drop them again quite as speedily. No doubt it was
very largely my own fault, but the only instruction from which I ever
obtained the proper effect of education was that which I received from
Mr. Wharton Jones, who was the lecturer on physiology at the Charing
Cross School of Medicine. The extent and precision of his knowledge
impressed me greatly, and the severe exactness of his method of
lecturing was quite to my taste. I do not know that I have ever felt so
much respect for anybody as a teacher before or since. I worked hard
to obtain his approbation, and he was extremely kind and helpful to the
youngster who, I am afraid, took up more of his time than he had
any right to do. It was he who suggested the publication of my first
scientific paper--a very little one--in the Medical Gazette of 1845, and
most kindly corrected the literary